Hellfire Cup

For the love of bikes.

When you love what you do, every job is a passion project. There are, however, special projects and a love of riding bikes turned this into something really special.

Background

How do you build a new event into something that’s truly class leading and raise national awareness from scratch? We sat down with Duncan Giblin from Storm Bay Promotions to talk about a crazy idea. He wanted to put on the largest mountain bike race Tasmania has ever seen – something truly special. It would be 4 days of pairs stage racing set around the beautiful East Coast of Tasmania. The objective was to attract national and hopefully international competitors to come and race on trails hand cut into the hills of Kellevie and Wielangta forests.

It’s been a long road since then. From helping name the Hellfire Cup, we went on to build a new brand, we’ve sent thousands of emails, launched two websites, designed countless promotional items and one memorable evening, screen printed hundreds of corflute signs. In short we lived, breathed and slept the Hellfire Cup.

2 weeks out from Day 1 of the race, the bushfire emergency hit Tasmania and it looked like all might be lost. The Hellfire Cup was named after the iconic nearby Hellfire Bluff, but we couldn’t help but feel the pressure of the name in a post-fire Tasmania. 4 days after the fires, we sat down, and rescheduled the race for November 2013. We started again with a determination to put on the best race we possibly could and we worked on delivering something truly special.

After being so deeply involved and preparing for so long, this is definitely one where we felt like we had some skin in the game. The forecast on day 1 of racing provided a stark contrast to the fires of January. We had torrential rain to contend with.

Being part of the team on this, and a major sponsor meant that we’re in it come hell or high water, so we got down in the mud and moved tents, trail markers, signs, updated and passed info on and liaised with sponsors. One of the wonderful things about the cycling community is that they not only supported the event in less than ideal weather, they got right behind us to help us put the 2013 Hellfire Cup on.

I’m glad to say in 2014 we were able to run the complete event without fire or flood, and the whole event team was proud to show the whole cycling community what we’d been working away on for the last few years. The 2015 Hellfire Cup was than ever and preparations are underway for another amazing 4 days of racing in South East Tasmania as this race has now become a part of the Australian Racing Calendar.

We’re super proud to be involved and even more proud of what we’ve produced to support this amazing event.